This may be the most sombre, the most hopeless, of all the psalms. The author was dying. Though most psalms of lament end on a hopeful note, Psalm 88 ends with the word darkness.

Psalm 88 is a maskil, an instructional psalm. A maskil intends to instruct in specific contexts. The situation of Psalm 88 is the hopelessness of someone who is terminally ill. This psalm teaches us how to die. It teaches us how to articulate grief, how to approach God, and that God does not demand that his children face death with artificial heroism. The psalm is an expression of grief to God himself, for which the author was not reproached. Otherwise this psalm would not have been found in Scripture.

It is not clear by which Heman this psalm was written. It is thought by some that the author was Heman the wise man (1 Kings 4:31). The other Heman who could have authored the psalm is the man mentioned various times in 1 and 2 Chronicles, who was the great-grandson of Hannah the prophetess. He was appointed by David as one of the leaders of song in the temple. This Heman was also known as the king’s seer (1 Chronicles 25:5). Some commentators believe that these two Hemans are in fact the same person.